LECTURE V.

CHARITY.

"For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good."— ST. MARK xiv. 7.

THAT destitution should continue to exist

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among men has been for ages the opprobrium of political economy. All kinds of combinations and arrangements have been proposed, and many of them have been tried, in the vain. attempt to banish it from human society. losophers have dreamed of model republics, where want should be unknown. Politicians, and tribunes of the people, have proposed and sometimes secured the enactment of agrarian laws, the objects of which were to so limit and distribute property as to provide for the wants of all. Vast colonizing movements have set sail from crowded or inhospitable shores, and have driven their keels into foreign sands, in the hope, that, under fairer or more propitious skies, there should be found such

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abundance that human indigence should have no place. Malthusian theories, Fourierite plans, and communistic organizations, have been suggested, and sometimes put into operation, to satisfy the obtrusive want that dogs the steps of human progress; but all in vain. The fact of human destitution remains in every land; and we dare not say that it has grown less importunate, or less unwelcome and menacing to the mere economist and civilian, as the world has advanced in civilization. Nor can it be claimed, that the Christian Church has yet propounded a solution of the difficulties by which the State has hitherto been baffled. Both Church and State have elaborated systems for the relief and care of pauperism, which have been worked with a zeal, an intelligence, a devotion, and a wealth of resource, that have left nothing of their kind to be desired. Yet the stubborn fact remains, that the tide of indigent wretchedness does not abate, but is rising, rather, throughout the Christian world.

The methods, whether ecclesiastical or civil, which are here referred to as having been tried without success, may all be designated by the common term, corporate, or institutional, relief.

And however diverse the motives upon which these have rested, yet it is but fair to allow, that, in Christian lands, all of them have been honest attempts to do good to the poor in accordance with Christ's commandment. Before we proceed,

then, to consider the causes of their failure, it will be well to inquire what Christ's plan was for dealing with human poverty. We shall then be in a condition to estimate the shortcomings of our human methods, and finally to seek a return to the right way. And the first characteristic of our Lord's attitude towards human poverty, as it seems to me, is, that he frankly recognized the inevitable persistence of it. In his teaching he almost reiterated the precept of the elder law, which said, "The poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." But Jesus, while he did this, did vastly more. He implicitly declared the presence and the need of the poor to be the perpetual opportunity and the unfailing blessing of his people. More profoundly than the elder law-giver he saw the social and political law on which the fact rested; and he saw,

too, how, out of the evil, there might arise abundant good. Yet the optimism of his view did not originate in any sort of indifference to human suffering. Far otherwise. More deeply and tenderly than any other man he was touched with compassion for the poor. More keenly and vividly than any other statesman he realized the anguish of human destitution. More exactly than any other economist, as I trust we shall see, he projected methods for the alleviation of its woes. Nevertheless, he admitted the persistence of it, and based upon this fact many of the most characteristic duties of his system of ethics. It is a fact of deep significance, that Christianity itself, both as taught and exemplified by its Author, was founded on the law of ministry to human need. In order to fulfil this law, he himself came into the world. His whole earthly career may be tersely described by the single phrase, He went about doing good. In sending out his disciples two and two before his face, he charged them with service to the poor. All his ethical teachings took the presence of the poor for granted, and he constantly enjoined ministry to them. To do good, not of abundance merely, but by self

denial; to do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again, he declared to be the highest human duty,

and privilege also; since by so doing, and only so, might men become the children of their Father in heaven. Nay, in one striking passage he identified himself with the poor, and declared that ministry to them, in their hunger and nakedness and squalor and wretchedness, was ministry to him, and entitled to his gratitude and an eternal reward. So completely, then, did he admit the inevitable persistence of poverty, that he adjusted the whole of his ethical system to the treatment of it, and made the proper treatment of it the indispensable condition of his favor, and of access to the joys of heaven.

Acknowledging, then, the persistence of human destitution, he did not seek to banish it from his kingdom. "Ye have the poor with you always." But while he profoundly commiserated their state, and urgently enjoined the duty of ministering to them, he yet enacted that this duty should be wholly voluntary: "Whensoever ye will ye may do them good." He furthermore enacted, that it should be, not only voluntary, but that it should be personal, and performed in a manner